


Such Singing

by kaizoku



Category: The Hobbit (Jackson Movies)
Genre: Apocalypse, F/M, Future Fic, Gen, Gimli/Legolas Greenleaf - Freeform, Grief/Mourning, Original Character Death(s), Reincarnation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-01
Updated: 2015-08-01
Packaged: 2018-04-10 05:57:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,180
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4379852
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kaizoku/pseuds/kaizoku
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tauriel meets Kíli again, but he doesn't remember her. Can she bear to start over?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Such Singing

**Author's Note:**

  * For [LeBibish](https://archiveofourown.org/users/LeBibish/gifts).



> LeBibish, I hope this works for you. There's some references to the second prophecy of Mandos, but it's open to interpretation. Warning: graphic violence and character deaths.
> 
> I'm grateful to F. for the beta. Any remaining mistakes are my own.

In the end there are no trees left. Arda is dying. The men of this age are riddled with corruption and greed, or they are hollow shells, blown like paper across the earth.

Tauriel has been fighting for too long from the shadows, tracking her prey from factory to cesspit, from the shanty towns of teeming dirty cities to the deserted dust farms. She has become as hard and dry as the earth’s crust, her arrows as deadly as the toxic rains, her steel as cold as the endless dreamless nights.

They released biological agents, a cocktail of virulence that spreads within minutes. Those that do not die in a pool of their own blood and excrement moan for water, for help, for death. Tauriel can only give them release - there is no water, no help, no cure. Disease cannot touch her; she walks through the battlefields alone, a red-haired angel of death. She would like to stop, to let them go on killing each other without her help, but she cannot ignore the suffering. It is all that is left to her, to witness. She has not seen another of her kind in a century.

One of her own team is lying on the ground, her face ashen. Frey, youngest of her warriors, who laughs at her own jokes and tenses her shoulders when she's aiming - Tauriel has been trying to break her of the habit. She lies, convulsing in pain, the bloodied mud her bed. Tauriel turns her head gently and makes it as quick as she can.

She longs to find her own rest. Longs to forget. No rescue is forthcoming, much less victory. The only thing to look forward to is the end.

When the end does come, her rage takes her by surprise. She is enveloped by the feeling of failure. _This is not right. This is not how it was supposed to go._

The sky is ripped apart and the sun blotted out. There is only the thinnest sliver of a moon and then that too disappears. The stars are alone in the sky, brighter than ever, and for a moment, Tauriel is filled with wonder, gazing upward.

In a few minutes, she can be on Weathertop, as it was once called. It's the best view. Not a good place to be trapped in the dark, but it's better than being caught out on the plain.

And then the stars begin to fall. The evenstar, the jewels of Orion’s belt, the seven sisters... One by one they burn blazing down and are extinguished. Explosions shake the earth like mortars. Flashes of red and white illuminate the dome of the sky and for a moment silhouette the shape of a man.

“Eärendil!" Tauriel whispers. It's a name from a book of childhood heroes, as foreign on her tongue as her own language has been for the last two thousand years. But she invokes his name. Is he here? Is this the time? Where is the black sword of Túrin to slay the Enemy? Why is it so quiet?

Then she smells ozone and hears the terrible sound of atoms shattering, reality bending so far that it breaks.

 _Was it worth it?_ she has time to think and then her world dissolves.

* * *

The halls of Mandos are cold and dark. She hears whispers, footsteps in the long stone corridors, but no light, no friendly face appears to give her welcome. Tauriel shudders. This stone feels dead, as she is dead, unlike the living stone of her first home, the king's palace, threaded through with roots and soil and clinging water droplets.

Everything in Mirkwood, even the evil things, was alive, vigorous and growing, but nothing grows in this place.

Still it cannot be long now. The battle is over, the halls are emptied, and soon whatever is to come shall be.

* * *

The glow of the Trees brings Tauriel back to her senses. It is quiet. She feels the light like a physical touch, though there is no heat. She is not cold, nor warm. She is nothing and nowhere, everything and everywhere. Then she hears the low hum of voices; it sounds as if they are calling to her. She turns away, walking through the soft fog until she feels bare ground under foot.

Pebbles crunch behind her. Tauriel's fingers tighten reflexively as she turns, before she remembers that she has no weapon. It's Legolas, walking with deliberately heavy steps.

"Did you think I was an orc?" He asks, a half smile on his face.

Tauriel shakes her head. "I have not fought orcs in many years."

It is all machines, bombs, and disease, a new kind of terror, but Legolas knows nothing of modern warfare. And it is erased from the world now. Still she misses the feeling of a bow in her hands, even the smooth metal of a gun.

"I thought you would be with your father," she says. She has heard Thranduil among the throng, leading the themes of the woodlands, the rivers and secret caverns, rising and following and blending his kingly voice with the divine strains of the Ainur.

She can't listen to it without wanting to scream.

"Tauriel, you are welcome among us." Legolas says, placing a hand on her arm. She shrugs it off, noticing with detachment that she is trembling.

"No, I can't-" Legolas lets his hand drop. "I'm sorry," she adds.

Legolas looks younger, no older than when she last saw him - it was in Lothlórien at the end of the war. She was there to meet him when he returned, as light-footed as when he went, trailing his peculiar bearded friend.

"You left at the right time," she says bitterly. "This last age has not been kind."

"Why did you not follow?"

"There were few ships indeed that could take the Straight Road after the fourth age." And she was still high on the fight then, still convinced that they would win.

"Did you never return to Eryn Lasgalen?"

"It was never the same. Something broke with Thranduil when you left." She does not say that it was her own fault as much as his. Thranduil would never entirely trust her after she had drawn upon him, defied him before his own guards.

And seeing the jagged profile of the Lonely Mountain served only to remind her of the pain.

"And it was nothing to do with that dwarf?" Legolas hints, cannily echoing her thoughts.

Tauriel scoffs. "I barely remember him."

"What was his name? Perhaps we could find-"

"No," Tauriel's voice is strident in her own ears, and she softens it, repeating, "No, it would not help."

"You can't know that without trying," Legolas replies calmly.

"And you?" She does not want to assume, yet it was plain to her that Legolas cared for Gimli. How it must have hurt to lose him. "Are you content now that your friend has returned?"

"I found peace in the Undying Lands. And yes, I am content. Though his father is less than pleased at our reunion." He grins wryly.

"But how long can it last?" Tauriel asks plaintively.

"It is all a part of the song. You can savor the time you have or you can grieve over its loss. But it is foolish to grieve before you must."

"At least your time was not cut short."

Legolas bows his head. "I hope you will find some measure of peace here."

Tauriel laughs. It feels like her throat is full of glass.

"Thank you, _mellon_. I hope so too."

* * *

Once she felt like a child among her elders. No matter how old she grew, they would always have been alive centuries before. Now it is the reverse. She is old. Outwardly she looks the same, but the years lay heavy on her. She feels polluted, tainted by the death that surrounded her.

The world is new, but she is not. She is a remnant, a piece from an old, dying star, faded and dim. And being in this world chafes at her. It is too clean, too blank a slate.

She thinks ruefully of Thranduil's lack of patience, of her own. If he had known both his captain and his son would fall in love with dwarves, would he have forbidden them each other? It is an idle thought. She could ask him - he is here, somewhere. But a frozen landscape lies between them. Her tongue is ice, her lips are stone.

* * *

If she just stays away from the glittering halls the dwarves are building, she will not have to see him. It's easy enough to tell herself she has imagined the glimpses of broad shoulders and long dark hair. But it cannot last forever.

"Tauriel!" Kíli calls. She ducks her head, hurrying her steps as if she has not heard him. She does not wish to offend but she cannot talk to him, not when he is so young and carefree and she is-

"My lady," he says, bowing, his voice the same as ever, and her heart jumps into her throat.

"What do you want?" She asks, moving forward to put him off guard and Kíli falters back. She holds herself rigid. She feels like a mountainside that could loose an avalanche if even a pebble is disturbed. But she will not take out her anger on him.

"I was told that you lived in Mirkwood in the world before. Can you tell me aught of its geography?" He asks nervously. "The southern reaches in particular are not well-known to us."

"We did not venture far beyond the Old Forest Road in my time." She pauses, thinking. "Oropher and Thranduil can tell you more of it, and the departure from Amon Lanc. Woodsmen dwelt along the edges and the Beornings were known to spend time there as well."

She did roam south, though Thranduil warned against it, but she did not see Dol Guldur until after the war was over.

What she remembers most is the crowning glory of the red-gold oaks in the last beams of the sun, the wind riffling through them like a lover, and the rich, dark smell of leaf mould, but she cannot share that with Kíli. He has not yet known sun nor wind, nor the dread of evil. How can she tell him?

She's taken aback when his eyes light up, anyway, as if she has given him a gift.

"Did you ever visit Erebor? It was my family's homeland," he adds needlessly. Tauriel shakes her head, unsure of how to answer. "Have you read the book of Bilbo the hobbit? My uncle had it from Gandalf. It is a strange account. Were you at the Elvenking's court?"

"I was captain of the guard," she replies cautiously. "I met the hobbit."

"Did we meet?" Kíli asks excitedly. "I feel as if we might have-"

"I must go," Tauriel interrupts. Her heart is beating like a drum, so loud she wonders if he can hear it. "Good day, dwarf."

She sounds like Legolas, cold and removed, but that is as it should be. It is.

* * *

Tauriel is walking alone in the woods. It is spring and the first leaves are budding from the trees. The dwarves have tied ribbons and baubles to the branches, to honor the spirits. Tauriel thinks they just don't know how to leave well enough alone. Isn't Yavanna's work enough? What is the point of gilding the lily?

A thrush alights in one of the trees, singing his cheerful song. Tauriel stands still, her mind blank. Then she listens harder, and the bird seems to be speaking to her. She closes her eyes, hearing the water in the stream, the ants crawling under the rocks, even the movement of clouds over head.

For a moment, everything stops and is pure and perfect, clear as air, and she can understand what the thrush is saying, and she is him and he her, and they are all singing - the bird and the branch and the leaves beginning to open to the new world -

And then the moment is over and Tauriel is herself again, weighed down by gravity, and the thrush takes wing above the forest.

* * *

Her reticence does not seem to discourage Kíli. The next time he does not ask if they have met before. _Before all this._ He smiles up at her, shy and charming by turns. He teases her gently. They walk in the new fields and Kíli spots a primrose, a tiny yellow blossom in the grass.

She blushes when he offers it to her, but tucks it behind her ear. Her mouth is dry and her eyes feel damp. She is aware that she is acting like a lovesick girl, but she can't help it.

The memory of Kíli has always been a comfort to her. Only now that he stands before her, it is not comfort but a stealthy blade sliding into her heart. Yet the pain is so sweet. She is alive and the world is alive with her.

**Author's Note:**

> Title is from "Such Singing in the Wild Branches" by Mary Oliver.


End file.
